


feel the distance bring us closer

by tarquin



Category: The Creatures (Youtube RPF)
Genre: (More characters to be added as the narrative progresses), M/M, road trip au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 22:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2363834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarquin/pseuds/tarquin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the tail-end of summer, Eddie asks Seamus if he'd like to do something reckless and stupid. For some reason, Seamus says yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	feel the distance bring us closer

It’s three short honks outside his window, just like in the movies, that begins the entire adventure.

The warm winds of late July carry in through Seamus’ window, barely disturbing him from where he’s hunched over in front of his laptop. It’s a muggy night, the sky promises rain and the heat has his skin permanently damp with sweat, but with his hair tied up and the breeze from the box fan blowing from his window Seamus finds he is, at the very least, content.

Content, if not bored out of his skull.

Mindlessly he moves from tab to tab on his browser, checking twitter, checking youtube, checking facebook and repeating. He can _just_ hear the siren song of Dark Souls II calling to him downstairs from the Xbone, but more realistically he can also hear his mother, who he’s not in the mood to debate with over who gets to use the big TV, or when he’s gonna get off his lazy ass and drag the system upstairs and make it work.

Maybe he’ll do that. Maybe tonight will be the night after a string of long suffering nights in which Seamus will drag that thing up to his room, and by some miracle his tv from the year 2003 will actually let the machine turn on.

Idly Seamus switches back to twitter, then facebook again. The prospects of the night sound _just ideal_.

Enter, the honks.

Seamus doesn’t make a hobby of getting honked at too much. Not by cars, geese, clowns, anything really. There also aren’t too many people in this town who would announce themselves by pulling silently down a suburban street well after sunset, and then idle outside of someone’s home and announce themselves by slamming their palm into the center of their steering wheel three times.

And it’s by these factors that Seamus knows who is outside his home, summoning him. It’s these factors that stretch his lips into a grin.

His first instinct is to check his phone, the one that he’s had in his pocket for hours and that has gone unchecked for that amount of time, due to the fact that it’s neither chirped nor buzzed against his thigh. And when he swipes his thumb over the shiny glass surface it tells him the same thing it had hours ago, that his last sent texts have gone unanswered, that no one has reached out since then. 

Which is neither biting nor surprising, he’d suspected nothing less. But seeing that he’s had no one try to contact him in so long solidifies that this is meant to be some kind of surprise (which he has well established that he hates, and in doing so made sure that he would get plenty from then on out,) and that his night has just taken a turn for the better.

Seamus’ hand drops to his side as he makes his way over to the window, peering over the box fan to see a shiny red car parked in front of his mailbox. Red, because red cars are Really Great, Seamus, and because the answer to a purple paint job is no, it’s not 1997.

The light from the downstairs window doesn’t reach all the way to the road, and the light that’s flicked on inside the little car doesn’t make it all the way up the lawn. But there’s enough to see and go by, and more than anything it’s easy to see that there’s a single palm pressed flat against the glass of the driver’s side window. Seamus, duty bound, lifts his unoccupied hand and rests it against the windowscreen.

His phone buzzes in his hand.

“You know, normal people knock on doors.” Seamus says exasperatedly as he lifts the device to his ear.

“Come downstairs baby boy,” Eddie doesn’t even reply, just rushes in headfirst and waits for Seamus to follow. This is not anything new and Seamus expected nothing less.

Still, his skin runs hot almost instantly. Baby Boy, goddamnit. But, okay, listen. He calls his dog Baby Girl, alright? It’s just. It’s a thing with him.

“What could you have planned for nine o’clock on a Wednesday?” Seamus hums, moving into action regardless. He peels away from the window and moves his feet into his shoes, reaches for his wallet on instinct. There was a time years ago where Seamus might think to say no to Eddie, or at least put up a fight or _at least_ expect to know where the car is going before getting into it. 

But years of standing beside his friend has taught him that asking questions only delays the inevitable, and even if the idea is terrible, absolutely terrible, it’s better for Eddie to have Seamus there to douse whatever fires flare up. And it’s better for Seamus to have something else to do beside consider surfing pornhub at nine pm on a Wednesday.

“You in the mood for ice cream?” Eddie asks in a genuine way. Seamus blinks. He’d been ready to talk Eddie out of buying an inflatable kiddie pool and filling it with hose water and jell-o mix by the morning (though, to be fair, he had learned his lesson the first time in ninth grade and he still can’t stand the feeling of ants on his skin,) and a trip for ice cream sounds kinda nice.

“Uh, sure.” He says, and Eddie makes a noise of affirmation.

“Awesome!” The boy says, “Because I have some- Hello Ms. O’Doherty!” One sentence drops halfway out of Eddie’s mouth and the volume of his voice climbs, just enough to make Seamus pull the phone away from his ear with a wince. Sure enough, Seamus can hear the boy’s voice outside as well as from the top of the phone.

“How’s your night going?” asks Eddie, polite as ever. Seamus’ mother answers something, or so the silence from the phone and muffled voice from below implies, and a second later Eddie announces he’s taking Seamus out for errands. Doesn’t ask if Seamus wants to come, just tells her that he will be. She, too, knows resistance is futile.

And she doesn’t even blink at this, not anymore. Instead his mother calls up to him, unaware that the two are already in contact.

“Seamus?” Comes a tired, if amused voice from downstairs. “Eddie’s here.” 

She sounds a little exasperated as she calls to him, and has every right to in Seamus’ opinion. There was a time where she would be saying this at least every other day to her son, and the breaks in-between would only be because Eddie was either already here, or Seamus was already out with him.

It hasn’t had a chance to happen so much this summer, though. Between Eddie working tirelessly at Summer odd jobs and Seamus being drafted into some work for a relative that took up most of his time, the pair’s rendezvous had been fewer the last few months than they had in some time. They still made time for each other of course, the idea of not doing so was unthinkable, but it was nothing compared to the days when the only time the other wasn’t in sight was because someone was in the bathroom.

So while Seamus hadn’t been expecting Eddie’s presence tonight, him suddenly showing up does nothing but make him smile and tie his shoes on tighter.

“Okay.” Seamus calls back down, making sure to yell into the mouthpiece just to give Eddie a taste of his own medicine. There’s a muffled laugh from the other end and Seamus rolls his eyes, moving to end the call.

“Be down in a second.” He says, then waits for Eddie to answer back “’Kay.” When he does, Seamus smiles.

He’s dressed for the weather, which currently has him in one of his several (some theorize hundreds,) graphic tees with a Futurama, Simpsons, or 80’s rock reference on the front. Jeans have since proven themselves too suffocating in this weather so the best he can do is a pair of basketball shorts, into which he deposits his wallet and phone. 

He pauses on his way out the door as a pair of green eyes blink open from the corner of his bed. Meowgi doesn’t bother to lift her head as she watches Seamus move to leave, which makes the hoodie under her all the more difficult to reach for. It is the heart of summer, yes, and right now Seamus kind of wishes he were in an ice bath rather than his stuffy little bedroom, but it’s also Colorado, with whom the weather is quite a fickle beast. 

He purses his lips in a moment of thought but shrugs, leaving Meowgi to her bed. This no doubt seals the deal that he’ll need that hoodie in an hour or less, but he’ll figure something out. 

Eddie, for example, is known to be very warm.

The cat yawns as he leaves out the door, and buries her nose back into the fabric.

xx

Downstairs, Seamus’ mother has retired back to the couch near the tv and is currently enraptured in some soap opera that had been recorded at one this afternoon. At least she’d been so kind as to leave the front door open for him.

Seamus makes a beeline for it, waving to her politely as he passes. He expects her not to say anything, as she is often well lost in the world of Redwine Springs or whatever, but she holds up a hand as Seamus almost steps off the carpet of the living room and onto the linoleum that borders the front door. He stops.

“How late are you gonna be out tonight?” She asks as she pauses her show. Seamus shrugs.

“Can’t say. He says we’re only gonna go out to take care of a couple things but it’s Eddie, so there’s no way to know.”

Oh, she knows. Other than Eddie’s own extended family that he lives with, Seamus’ mother knows all too well the pair’s unpredictability.

“How did you get all tangled up with him?” She asks with a small laugh, like she hasn’t been saying this since the first time she met the over-exuberant boy four years ago. All the same, Seamus has to suppress a bristling in his shoulders at her phrasing.

“Day and night, you two.” She carries on. “Never ceases to amaze.”

“Yeah, it’s something.” Seamus says, much the same way he’s said it to coworkers and friends and Eddie’s secondary family who still marvel at how Eddie’s managed to keep Seamus at his side for so long. After a moment he asks in a much more dry tone, “So are you gonna lock me out again tonight?”

His mother looks up, unimpressed. “You gonna try and come into my house at three in the morning again?”

Well played.

“Probably not.”

“Then probably not to you too. Now get out there with him before he comes looking for you and raids the fridge again.”

Seamus gives her a thumbs up and slips out the door, it closes behind him with a thud.

 

The grass is dewy and slippery under Seamus’ feet but he makes it to the passenger side door without incident. By now the internal lights have been flicked off and only blink to attention when Seamus lets himself in, sliding into the coolness of the car with a whump.

Air conditioning has the car at a nice, subarctic-x degrees, and Seamus both revels in the cool down and already regrets leaving his sweater behind. Eddie sits excitedly at the steering wheel (Eddie sits excitedly everywhere. Also stands excitedly. Exists excitedly,) while pop-punk music blares out his speakers from where his phone’s been plugged into the radio. It’s too loud and Seamus doesn’t know why the singer hates his town so fucking much, but he’ll put up with it if it means in two minutes that he’ll be able to switch out for Floyd. It’s a thing.

“I was wondering when you were coming.” Eddie hums as Seamus tugs the seat belt into place. “I was ready to head in there after you.”

“If I wasn’t coming I would at least tell you.” Seamus says, palming down the volume so he doesn’t have to shout. “Of course, not until I’d locked myself behind a door that you can’t break down.”

“I’d break in with a credit card instead!” Eddie responds much too quickly and confidently for it to even remotely be a lie. Seamus sighs, “I know.”

Inside the house Seamus can just see a vague shape that is his mother, all focus on the blinking light of the tv and none on the car that idles out front. While he watches her, Eddie puts the car in gear and inches forward, not fifty feet ahead.

Here is the part of the street where the streetlights are spaced too far apart. Here is the part of the street between the businessman who is home twice a month and the elderly couple who are in bed by eight every night. Here is where the road is draped in shadow and any other cars driving down it get just a flash of break light as they go by.

“God, I thought Puerto Ricans liked heat.” Seamus teases as Eddie puts the car into parked again. While Eddie fiddles with his seat belt Seamus draws his hands up the goosepimpled skin of his arms, which are, in fact, blessedly cool. His words catch Eddie’s ear though, if the flash of teeth and glint of brightness across the other boy’s glasses is a reaction to gauge by.

“Why don’t you try working in a garage, Seamus?” He says, a toying bite behind his words. “Try sweating your balls off all day and then having to drive in a hot car home and then making a _little_ time to see your boyfriend, who you know hates the heat, and,” 

Seamus holds up a hand. “The joke was, you were supposed to say “Well let me warm you up, Seamus.” And then jump me.” Seamus says. He even drops his voice a couple octaves in the impression just to rile the other boy up more than he already has.

Eddie stops talking. Success.

Seamus’ hands click off the seat belt and then there’s a warm body leaning across the center console, backing him into the hard passenger side door. Eddie is laughing into his kiss and Seamus is trying to stay smug, but it’s hard to be anything really when clumsy hands are studying his body, climbing his torso and finding his chest and jaw and trying to work into his hair. 

Seamus sighs in relief as Eddie does so, relaxing into the touch and angling their bodies together as best he can, clacking their glasses together and nearly kicking the dashboard in the process. His hands feel for anything in the dark, Eddie’s thigh, his hip, the gearshift. Mostly they just touch and feel and taste and hum contentedly in the quiet pop-rock darkness.

There was a time when Seamus would have been high with this. 

A time when the danger and unpredictability of it all would trickle into his mind and make his senses go sharp, would make every lasting bit of contact burn into his skin, his memory. That alone could have driven him to do it again and again and again, and the fact that it was Eddie who continually snuck back to him, hid with him in the safety of the shadows and whined in appreciation at every touch made it all the better.

They would pursue it relentlessly then, make up excuses to be out of their houses at later and later hours and dig themselves deeper and deeper into the dizzy pit they wanted nothing more than to inhabit forever. It was erratic, it was precarious. It was perfect.

Fast forward a year and a half and Seamus’ mind still aches to go fuzzy. His heart doesn’t jackhammer in his chest like it once did and there’s a fair amount less adrenaline coursing through his veins, but it’s still everything he’s ever wanted. Eddie still kisses with fervor and nips playfully at his lips, Seamus still leans into him every chance he gets, content and desperate all at the same time.

The fear, he supposes, is long gone. But the craving that preceded it still has strong roots inside of him, and he feeds it, feeds it, feeds it with every scrape of Eddie’s stubble against his jaw.

Eventually the song from Eddie’s phone fades out, the silence interrupted by wet lips and contented hums. Soon, however, the feeling of the door digging into Seamus’ back creeps into his consciousness and not long after that Eddie begins to shuffle uncomfortably from where he’s draped himself across the car and Seamus’ body.

Eddie pulls back, giggling about as cheerfully as he can, which is saying a lot. “Was that what you wanted?”

“It was alright.” Seamus answers. He tries to be dry and aloof as ever when he does so but he’s betrayed by his own happiness, his tone husky and soft.

“Fuck you.” Eddie purrs, and gives Seamus a short Eskimo kiss before settling back into the driver’s seat. Seamus makes a face, though it’s lost in the dimness.

“So,” Seamus says, “Do you want to stay here and do this for an hour and a half or did you actually want to go for ice cream, because both sound pretty fun to me.” 

He says this as he pieces himself back together. Straightens his shirt that had climbed over the softness of his belly and tosses his ponytail that had crept over his shoulder back behind him. “Cause I can kick the seat back and we could do this the right way, or,”

“Nah, actually.” Eddie says with just the smallest amount of trepidation. “I actually need to talk to you about some stuff, so.”

That’s not normal. That’s not their usual procedure. Seamus stops from where he’s shuffling back into place and turns to face the other boy.

“You can’t talk to me here?” He asks. 

Eddie’s tone has significantly dropped in the playful flirtiness and it’s stunted now, more businesslike and hesitant. It cuts through the haze in Seamus’ mind like a knife. Beside him, Eddie sputters.

“Not here, I don’t think.” He says. “I mean, I haven’t seen you all day, Seamus. And it is a good night for ice cream.” 

Eddie pauses, choosing his next words carefully. “It’s not bad news, don’t be worried.”

If it were that easy, Seamus wouldn’t worry in the first place. And he’s not, he swears. Just a little apprehensive. If there’s something on Eddie’s mind that he can’t share in three long text messages, each followed with a frowny face for effect, it tends to weigh a lot on Seamus’ mind, and the silence of the car isn’t helping.

“Alright.” Seamus says, noticing almost instantly how Eddie reinflates as he plays along. Sitting here and prying it out of him won’t do either of them any good, nor will unexpected oncoming traffic.

Seamus unplugs Eddie’s phone from the radio jack and attaches his own, turning on something guitar heavy and sultry to fill the silence. Eddie puts the car into gear and they lurch forward, and neither says another thing.

xx

Little Dairy’s Ice Cream has been around for at least as long as Seamus has and it has never changed.

The small roadside building is by some miracle still lit up as Eddie pulls in, despite the fact that it’s ten to closing and there’s only one other car in the tiny lot that makes up half of the ice cream shop’s property. Yellow light spills out of the two windows that face the road in front of it, and the blue and red sign still blinks in and out “O-P-E-N”, to which Seamus hears Eddie give a victorious little “Yes.” 

“Stop looking so worried, Seamus.” Eddie says with an eye roll as he parks. “I’m not breaking up with you, I’m not sick, it’s nothing like that. Just go order whatever you want, okay?”

Seamus wasn’t aware that his face had been broadcasting worry, though it makes sense that Eddie of all people would pick up on his feelings. A lot of people tell Seamus that they can’t tell the difference between him being overjoyed and devastated. Sometimes Eddie can tell that he’s disappointed that there wasn’t enough milk for his cereal in the morning.

 

Late summer wreaths Seamus as soon as he pulls open the door and the cool air that he’d grown attached to leaves him, replaced by stifling humidity and a swarm of tiny bugs attracted to the lights. He pulls a face as he steps forward, treading through a screen of gnats that don’t move even as he walks straight through them. What a great night for ice cream. 

“You all right over there, Seamus?” Eddie asks cheekily, leaning on the roof of the car and grinning as Seamus turns around, missing the gnats by millimeters. He backs up and shakes his head with an eye-roll, and Eddie grins.

“Summer is not your season.” He says, and Seamus gives an unhappy “ugh,” of agreement.

“Yeah, I’ll be glad when it’s over.” He spits, rounding the front of the car. His stomach hardens as he says the words, but Eddie says nothing.

Everything about the ice cream place is old, from the loud humming equipment inside to the sun-stained signs that are hung up on the inside of the glass. At one point they’d been vibrant, or so it would be safe to assume. The sharpie-penned posterboards would have once been bright pink and lime green and decorated with stickers and highlighter lines, but time has dulled their colors into pastel shades of their former glory. There are also pictures of food options that Seamus is fairly sure are older than he is.

Not that it changes anything, really. A banana split ordered today is the same as a banana split ordered eighteen years ago, and it doesn’t really matter if the picture isn’t as pretty as it once was.

There’s a singular employee parked at the order window when the pair approach, one who looks every bit the part annoyed that someone had shown up and lengthened her shift another few minutes.

“Medium chocolate cone, please.” Eddie says, smiling as though he’s not getting daggers stared through him from through the window screen. The girl writes down his order and turns to Seamus, looking about as enthused as he is.

“Medium vanilla cone for me.” He says, making his voice sound as dry as possible. She rings them up and Eddie drops a five between them, enough to cover both, and when she walks back to the machines Eddie raises his eyebrows.

“Yeesh.” He says in a voice that’s supposed to be too quiet for her to hear, but loud enough to be heard over the hum of traffic behind them. It almost works. “What are you doing dating me when you two seem like a perfect match, Seamus? Ice king and queen.” Seamus fights the urge to roll his eyes.

He says, “Say something to me like that again and you’re gonna have a medium vanilla ice cream cone down the back of your shirt, you know that?” and then swallows the very strong urge to grab Eddie’s hand, just to make that much more of a statement. He knows the boy is teasing, it’s a thing with him. Seamus is pretty sure he’s endured more of that teasing than one man ever should, but. There’s a line, you know?

Eddie wriggles at this, no doubt imagining Seamus’ course of action taking place. After that he offers up an apologetic smile. “You know I’m just kidding Seamus, I’d never let you leave me. And if anyone tried to take you from me, POW.”

He mimes taking a swing at the ice cream place’s direction just as the employee returns, a cone in each hand. She moves to open the window just as Eddie swings, and it all results in Eddie jumping nearly a foot in the air in surprise, then apologizing profusely a second later while the employee continues to balance her bounty.

She assures him that it’s no problem, but her words seem to carry more weight once Eddie drops another five into the plastic ice cream cone marked “TIPS.”

 

They each take their cone and move towards the side of the building where a few wooden picnic tables have been set up since the dawn of time.

“POW, huh?” Seamus teases as they round the corner. Eddie laughs again, trying to balance his cone and check Seamus’ hip at the same time. “Screw you,” he says, laughing, as he picks them a place to sit.

Any old bench would do, but Eddie chooses one that’s just lightly washed in the color from the old yellow sign behind the place. He skips the wooden bench part completely, using it instead as a stepping stool to then perch on the actual table, resting his legs where his ass should be. This is not remarkable behavior for Eddie Cardona. Seamus copies him so they’re pressed hip to hip. 

They eat in silence for a few moments, watching cars go by and looking up to study the distant bugs that dance around the orange glow of the streetlights. The city hums around them and they say nothing, ask for nothing, until Eddie lets out a long stream of breath and says, “So, they let me go today.”

Seamus blinks at the boy for a second, some ice cream from his cone dribbling down over his fingers. He’s too distracted to lap it away.

“Is that all?” He asks, befuddled. “That’s what’s got you so tense, really?”

Eddie doesn’t look up, doesn’t look at him. “Yeah.” He says sullenly. “For the most part, at least.”

Seamus looks at him, trying to keep up with the melt of his cone and the strangeness of the situation at the same time.

“Eddie, the last time you got fired I found out because you called me in the middle of the day and told me to grab my bathing suit because you suddenly had the day off and we were having a beach party. It was pretty lacking in ‘I’ve let you down’ ice cream.”

Eddie smiles, he’s got chocolate all in the hairs around his mouth. Seamus wishes they’d grabbed napkins.

“Well I mean,” he starts off again, “It’s not so much that the shop let me go as it’s…” Now he’s actually struggling to say the words. He won’t look at Seamus and that makes Seamus inch closer to him, want more to have the boy stop acting so strangely aloof.

“I think that’s gonna be it for me this summer, Seamus.” He says, admitting it like defeat. The words don’t hit Seamus immediately and Eddie carries on, “I’ve done pretty good this summer, this past year, and I think I’m done saving and waiting. I just. I don’t think I’ll be able to get another job and make decent pay before I leave.”

Seamus looses all taste for the remainder of the food in his mouth, and in his hand the cone continues to drip unbidden. Seamus finds himself staring at the vaguely lit brick wall in front of him and he doesn’t say a word. Then, “Oh.”

This does a lot more to explain the tense air around Eddie, yes, but Seamus also comes to realize why he couldn’t just hear this in the car back near the house. There, he could have said some filler words and unclicked his seat belt and walked home. Here, he’s trapped. 

When Seamus doesn’t comment further, doesn’t move but to settle his shoulders and exhale, Eddie lets a few more tight words out of his mouth, each one more apprehensive than the last.

“Look. Since the summer’s winding down for both of us I was hoping we could use this time to hang out more, you know? Now that I’m fired and your uncle doesn’t need your help with work… Seamus?”

His gut’s a firestorm, his mind is whirring. Like all the pointed work he’s done since May is coming apart, unraveling in his hands and next to him, and he has to sit there and take it. He’d known something like this would come, it literally would have to and he’d be powerless to stop it, but a little more warning would have been nice.

“I’m listening.” He says, voice level. Ice cream drips off his closed fist onto the bench, his shoe, the ground.

“I missed you this summer, you know?” Eddie says softly. He knows he’s hurting the boy, picking open close wounds. And at this point he doesn’t even try to be subtle, his free hand circling Seamus’ shoulders and squeezing tight. “I wish we could have been together so much this summer that we got sick of each other, like we used to.”

The memory brings the smallest curve to Seamus’ lip. What a time that was. “Yeah. Me too.”

“And now that I have free time and you have free time, I’m just saying. I want you to fill up all my extra time now. I want to gorge myself on you so much that I can’t stand you again. I miss you.”

Seamus turns to face him.

“God.” He says with feigned condescension that’s bordering on genuine, “What poetry books have you been reading?” 

The words slide out of Seamus’ mouth before he can give them a clearance check and they kill the terse mood, but in their wake they bring a giant grin on to Eddie’s face, and that’s better.

“What,” Eddie giggles, “Was that too much? I thought of that earlier today while I was eating a hot dog and I thought you’d like it.”

Seamus can’t help it, he cracks a smile. This is the inevitable. This is the nightmare, and now Eddie is trying to soften the blow. Seamus honestly shouldn’t have expected any less.

Feeling gradually spills back into his hands and toes and the world begins to spin again. Seamus quickly realizes that more than half of his ice cream cone is everywhere but on the cone or in his stomach. For the love of god, napkins.

“You really know how to talk a guy up, you know that?” He says, giving up and letting what’s left of the cone fall to the ground and focusing instead on licking his hand clean.

Eddie preens. “I try. But seriously Seamus, talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Seamus is thinking a lot of things. Some of them he even wants to translate from knots in his gut to actual words. But his hands, all sticky and gross now, just twist in his lap and he can’t find ways to say It without knowing that he’s said It all before. And he’s grateful it’s Eddie who is holding his shoulder right now, because there’s no one else who would wait this long the words to come out of Seamus’ mouth, and then be satisfied when he says, “I miss you too.”

They breathe in tandem for a moment, matching each other’s deep inhales and slow exhales. The hand on Seamus’ shoulder squeezes again and Eddie says sympathetically, “I know you hate September, and talking about September. I didn’t want to bring it up.”

“I figured.” Seamus answers back. “As soon as you said it I realized why you’d turned to stone in the car.”

“But until then I really do want to make use of this free time of ours. Not just half-hour trips to seven-eleven or fooling around in the car. I wanna wring every moment left of this summer out with you.” He stops talking and Seamus nods. Truthfully that sounds great, better than great.

Then he starts speaking again, “So that maybe when the end of summer hits, it won’t be so hard. Or as hard as it might be, you know?”

Seamus doesn’t, he really does not. And Eddie wouldn’t appreciate him not saying as much. But he still wants this conversation to be over, and so he says “Yeah.”

Eddie lifts his head as the lights of a lone car on the road speed out of sight, then ducks in carefully to leave a light kiss under Seamus’ ear. Which, a second later, Seamus remembers is one that’s going to have ice cream remnants in his hair, but the sentiment is appreciated all the same.

“It sounds like fun.” Seamus says, wriggling away from his grasp. “I mean it, it sounds like it could be a good time.”

“Yeah! I was hoping you’d say something like that,” Eddie says. He goes to say more, and that’s when the light in front of them flicks out. The side-door to the ice cream place opens and slams, and the pair are left in shadow.

Seamus laughs dryly while Eddie makes a noise of indignation. There’s a splat then, and then Eddie’s voice going taut as he goes “Aw, my ice cream!”

Seamus watches as the moment between them gets buried further and further in the ground. He’s glad it’s there now.

“I think it’s safe to say ten o’clock is here.” He says, gently getting to his feet and helping Eddie down with both of their gross, sticky hands. Next time, napkins for sure. “And I think _that_ would be our cue to go.” 

xx

“So what are we doing tomorrow?”

Seamus asks this as Eddie pulls out into the main road. The air conditioning is on and pumping and control of the radio has gone back over to Eddie, who has chosen something pop-y and love-schmaltzy to the surprise of no one. Eddie gives him a look and shrugs, and suddenly it could be junior year all over again, sat in Seamus’ mom’s car, ‘where do you want to go?’ ‘I dunno.’

“We could do anything.” Eddie says helpfully. “Is there anywhere you’ve been wanting to go for a while?”

A few things come to the front of Seamus’ mind, movies he’d like to see or things in storefront windows that he’d wanted to take closer looks at. But nothing that stands out, and nothing that seems fitting as a spark to their cause. He tells Eddie as much and the other boy humphs.

“Well keep thinking about it, okay? Nothing’s really off-limits as long as you’re pitching in for gas.”

“Sure,” Seamus says, watching the city outside.

It’s not a far drive from Seamus’ suburbs to the heart of the city, but Eddie lengthens the trip by taking a turn that pulls them around the town, essentially giving them a little more time to spend together. This is usually around the time Jell-o Pool ideas start to crop up, so Seamus turns vigilant.

And sure enough, the further away they get from town, the more jumpy and excitable Eddie gets. Seamus can almost see the cartoon thought bubble floating up over his head as a plan hatches itself. Seamus wants in.

“What are you thinking about?” Seamus asks plainly. Eddie’s free leg stops shaking from the other side of the car.

“I dunno, I guess I’m excited, Seamus!” Eddie exclaims, though Seamus has noticed as much and could have pointed this out as well. “And well. And. No, it sounds stupid.”

Seamus cocks his head to the side, eyeing the other boy. “I don’t remember you ever letting that stop you before.”

Eddie pulls a face. “Oh, shut up.”

“No, seriously, tell me what’s on your mind. You’ve already done your worst, let me have it.”

Which is a very dangerous door to leave open for anyone, Eddie especially, but Seamus lets it happen. Eddie’s here to spark the fires, he is here to contain them.

“I kinda.” Eddie starts, “Don’t want to stop driving tonight. You know what I mean?”

“Not really?”

“Come on, Seamus! Like, what if I just turned up here, got on the freeway, and we kept going? What if we drove to like, California or New York or something, just to do something stupid? I wanna go on an adventure, I don’t want to go home yet. I don’t want to take you home yet.”

This is the part where Seamus steps in. This is the part where he tells Eddie that he’s been watching The Hobbit too much, and to think of the consequences. Then Seamus says something cheeky about not wanting to go home just yet, and they pull over on the side of the road again until someone thinks they see the lights from a cop car. This has happened many times.

The green sign on the side of the road warns them that the turnoff to the highway is approaching.

The last time Seamus didn’t step in and say no, you haven’t thought this through, let’s wait until morning and talk about it then, the pair had driven half way across the state to a specialty dog breeder, and had resulted in a ball of wrinkles named Puppy Chef, who is currently no doubt snoring somewhere in Eddie’s room. That had been a worthwhile exchange in the long run, a few months of picking up messes from the untrained pup and a fierce scolding from Eddie’s guardian was nothing compared to the happiness Eddie got from the dog.

But other ideas, ones like these, are ones that shouldn’t be made on a dime. Eddie knows this. Seamus couldn’t be more aware of it.

Another sign tells them soon it will be too late.

Eddie’s looking at him now, probably because Seamus didn’t shoot the idea down as fast as he did with the “Marshmallow gun senior prank” catastrophe a few months back. Seamus stares out at the dashboard, past the trees and on to the horizon.

_Say no now. Do it now, Seamus, what are you thinking?_

“If you want to get out of the state it’s best to take M66, I think.”

Eddie stares with eyes like dinner plates, almost not registering the words until Seamus stares back blankly, waiting for the car to turn.

“Are you _serious,_ Seamus?” Eddie’s voice is high, taut like he’s just heard that he won the lottery. The car veers to the side and takes a hard curve, steering them on to the highway. Somewhere in the back of Seamus’ mind he recognizes that he’s just played into a hand that will no doubt lead him to disaster. But it’s hard to dwell on it when Eddie’s currently cheering vocally while he’s also got them pointed at New Mexico.

“Yeah, I mean.” Seamus says. That’s really all he can say, what else is there? This can’t be anything other than a mistake, this can’t take them anywhere else but trouble. Eddie speeds up to match the pace of other cars around them.

He meets Eddie’s eyes.

“Why not, you know?”

Eddie nods briskly, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel.

“All right!” He shouts, his adrenaline contagious. Seamus’ fingertips buzz. What has he done. “Well then, let’s go!”

**Author's Note:**

> while writing this i couldn't for the life of me think of the words "banana split" and instead kept coming back to "banana float". banana floats for everyone!


End file.
